Jade Circle brings together dance, music, projections, and storytelling, at the Kay Meek Arts Centre May 20 to 22
Artist Jasmine Chen relearns Mandarin and discovers lost family history in multidisciplinary, personal show
Jade Circle
Jade Circle is at the Kay Meek Arts Centre May 20 to 22
JADE CIRCLE is a deeply personal journey for Vancouver artist Jasmine Chen. In it, the artist yearns to reconnect with her late grandmother, relearning Mandarin and discovering lost stories through intimate interviews with her mother.
As Chen told Stir in an interview before the production’s premiere in 2024, “In the days and weeks after her passing, I found myself recalling these short fragments of children’s songs that she had taught me when I was a kid…. I could only remember these little fragments, which brought up a lot of loss for me in terms of realizing that I never really got a chance to know her because of the language barrier.”
The unique resulting show, reappearing at Kay Meek Arts Centre in the coming week, integrates dance, music, original artwork, projection design, and storytelling. Chen’s family history emerges, tracing back to grandparents who fled China to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, then immigrated to Toronto, where Chen was born. Fittingly, the storytelling takes place in both Mandarin and English (with English subtitles projected for the former).
Directed by Derek Chan, the work was created as part of the Mother Tongue Project, in a rice and beans theatre production in association with Neworld Theatre. And it's an artful call for others to reclaim their mother tongue: as the performer says, "Don’t wait to learn and don’t wait to ask. Whatever your language is, spoken or unspoken, it can bring you closer to who you are.” 
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